I have the greatest privilege of being associated with Native cultures of many continents.. thus satisfying my curiosity and desire to travel and the chance to help them with my medical expertise. these notes are from those travels. I am a professor at the University of Havana

samedi 25 octobre 2014

WHEN EXOTIC BECOMES EXTORTION: INDIAN FOOD IN MIAMI

WHEN
EXOTIQUE BECOMES EXTORTION :INDIAN FOOD IN MIAMI

Indian
Cuisine is an oxymoron, unless of course it is a compilation of numerous
cuisines found all over India. Indian cuisine was introduced to the West by its
former masters, the British, and it is that version and not the every day
versions of what people in the subcontinent eat or what one could delight in
some of their best restaurants.

The
so-called Indian Restaurants in the UK and elsewhere has a history that in
itself is exotic.

“The British have long enjoyed food with a bit of
bite. And 200 years ago, an Indian migrant opened Britain's first curry house
to cater for the fashion for spicy food

"Indian dishes, in the highest
perfection… unequalled to any curries ever made in England." So ran the 1809
newspaper advert for a new eating establishment in an upmarket London square
popular with colonial returnees.

Diners at the Hindostanee Coffee House
could smoke hookah pipes and recline on bamboo-cane sofas as they tucked into
spicy meat and vegetable dishes.

This was
the country's first dedicated Indian restaurant, opened by an entrepreneurial
migrant by the name of Dean Mahomed.”

The poor
man filed for bankruptcy in just three years since it was not the custom of
people including the colonial returnees to go out to eat, they had cooks at
home.

Is the word Curry as Indian as people
think it is? No, the word is much older in the western usage than the
colonialization and its origin is also interesting. One theory suggests the
word comes "kari", Tamil for sauce. However, an English cookbook, The
Forme of Cury, was published in the 1390s. (Read it online with Project
Gutenberg)

"All
hot food of the time was referred to as cury. It came from the French word
'cuire' which means to cook."

Nearly
three out of four Indian restaurants outside India are owned, the food cooked
by BANGLADESHIS, and surprisingly almost all of them are from just one district
in Bangladesh, Sylhet.

In UK, In
Brussels, I have put this question to the owner: Why Sylhet? Why Bangladeshis?

"BANGLADESHI" FOOD IN BRUSSELS: LUNCH FOR 10 EUROS

The answer
is always the same, when they arrived as immigrants, they were not qualified for
many of the jobs available, and most of the men could cook, so they opened up
small eating-places. In UK where the returning colonial masters already had
established a palate for Curried dishes, and with the increasing immigration
after the Second World War, these places became popular.

Why Sylhet?
That needs a bit of digging into.

“A number of Indian sailors jumped ship or were dumped
at major ports including Cardiff and London. These seamen from Sylhet - now a
region in Bangladesh - opened cafes, mainly to cater for fellow Asians.

"They were self-taught but they cleverly adapted
themselves to the British palate," says Mr. Groves.

And in the 1940s, they bought bombed-out chippies and
cafes, says Ms. Collingham, selling curry and rice alongside fish, pies and
chips. "They stayed open really late to make money to catch the after-pub
trade."

And so the ritual of the post-pub curry was born.

"It took quite a long time for the British to
recover from World War II," says Ms. Collingham. "They were willing and
more open to try new things.

After 1971,
there was an influx of Bangladeshis following war in their homeland,
particularly to London's rundown East End. Many entered the catering trade, and
today they dominate the curry industry.”

Dr. Lizzie
Collingham, author of Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors.

Peter
Groves, co-founder of National Curry Week

The USA,
especially Latin American dominated Miami, is not a good place for Curry, and
for that matter much of the other Ethnic foods. A good curry or a good Mexican Mole
is hard to come by, even though one can get a tasty plate of Cuban Food, which
to Miami is what Curry is to England.

All my
excursions into the Curry world of Miami have been less than tantalizing to my
tonsils, so I was excited when my good friends and eating companions,
Dr&Mrs W, invited me to savour “Indian” food at Copper Chimney at Sunny
Isles in Miami.

It is
situated in a strip mall, at a corner of Miami dominated by Russian and East
European immigrants who began arriving here in Miami quite recently. Asian
immigrants are rare in Miami, perhaps because they would have to learn Spanish
to survive here, so the few Asians who are here are professionals. Perhaps that
explains the extortionate prices of “curries” in this Indian restaurant, the
first I have eaten in the west not owned by a Bangladeshi, but by a turbaned
Sikh!

Extortion in Miami: Rogan Josh 21 dollars, nearly 15 British

Pounds!

The prices
were twice as much as any similar restaurants in London. The quality was not
something to write home about. But it lent to some anthropological
observations.

The owners
and family were suitably obese, as Indian immigrants to USA tend to be, and
pleasant in their singsong accents. The greeter was Russian and the waitress
was Lithuanian, keeping with the neighbourhood ambience. The Slavic immigrants
in Miami are notorious for their “mafia-style” practices and the turbaned Sikh
has learned to adapt as well, charging twice as much for his dishes, offering
nothing spectacular: ambience, service or food quality, in return. It is
certain that I will not return.

I fondly
thought of KANIZ Indian Restaurant, suitably owned by Bangladeshis from Sylhet,
situated a stones throw away from Heathrow airport. If you ever find yourself
overnighting there before or after an international flight I highly recommend
this restaurant. They would send a car to pick you up from your restaurant if
you call them. It is far more exotic and far less extortionate than its Miami
counterpart.

I had
chicken karahi the last time I ate there with my sister and just recently she
and her husband dined there the night before they boarded their plane to Miami.

Dishes at Kaniz, average Dinner Price,

20 pounds per person, 30USD

Oh what a
difference!

Outside
India, the south Indian cuisine is extremely difficult to find, but it is
easier to find them in South East Asia or the Middle East. Give me any day a
Chettynad Dish or one from Mangalore and in Paris, along the rue Chappelle, for
one third of the prize of a dish we paid in Miami, one could savour a good
Masla Dosai! My own preference for South Indian food outside South India is
Kuala Lumpur, where a plethora of restaurants owned and operated by Malayalee
Christians or Tanjore Moslems would serve up authentic dishes of their regions
of origin in India.

For the
Mughal Inspired, North Indian cuisine or the Portuguese inspired Goan cuisine,
the best place is London, even though I must admit I did have a nice Fish Curry
in Lisboa, the chef was from Goa.

A good
Iranian friend of mine, when studying in London, could identify the Persian
origin of many of the “Indian” dishes, brought over to the North of the
subcontinent by Moghul and Afghan invaders.

So Curry,
like the word itself, is the food of Invaders and Colonizers, which the
Colonized cleverly guised to sell back to their former masters!

Qui êtes-vous ?

Ever since being a Medical Student and Trainee Doctor in Melbourne, London and Miami, I have been involved in Interantional Medicine . Currently I am associated with the excellent Peer to Peer Network for Diabetes care in Cambodia, Mo Po Tsyo, www.mopotsyo.org.
Also with the help of my good friends in Bogor, Indonesia we hope to do something similar but in a much smaller scale.
It is easy to tell you what I am: an Endocrinologist and a Medical Anthropologist, engaged in both fields.
Cuba, Miami and American Indians are the worlds that usually I rotate around. in the occident and Cambodia and Indonesia in the orient.

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Ever since I was a child, I have lived in two countries at a time and the countries changed: Brunei, Australia, Sweden, USA, England, Jamaica, various places in the USA..Now Cuba and USA with a definite commitment to the North American Indians (Los Indios)..

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